


London Bridge is Falling, Falling, Falling

by poincare



Category: Make It or Break It
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-07-24 16:05:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7514575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poincare/pseuds/poincare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All you have to do is learn how to <em>feel</em>--</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AU, because television has immense propensity for melodrama and I can’t be bothered to remember every badly played plot-point. Hence I have stretched some events in the timeline apart further than they were, some closer together, and erased some entirely. To that point Payson, Sasha, and friends (and the storyline, I hope!) have been somewhat de-ABCfamilied.

The day Sasha asks Payson to paint a canvas with her movement is the same day she realizes that perhaps the power she strives for is as much about control as it is about a distinct lack of it. Before, she had come to consider grace a form of power, but one beyond her reach. The colors are everywhere, blinding, and it strikes her that maybe she has always been like this, a force to be unleashed in some form or fashion, more than the sum of each deliberate, distinct effort. She feels as if she is capable of anything. She catches his eyes, and she can see a hint of wonderment in them, mixed in with pools and pools of pride. She wonders if he has always seen her like this, if he has always known what she did not.

Her previously moping ego preens, hushed and awed. _Look at you, Keeler,_ it says to her in a voice vaguely resembling Lauren Tanner’s. For a moment she imagines the twin incisions on her back winking at her in silent praise. _You are more than a gymnast._

_All you have to do is learn to feel--_

And that is how it begins.

__

She has known for sometime that Sasha and Summer have been dancing around each other in some capacity, though she’s not sure she quite understands how those particular opposites attract- he in his glorious, sharp cynicism and she a parrot of things Payson’s not really sure anyone understands. Perhaps they clash enough that the frustration has converted itself into something else entirely. Energy is conserved, after all. She hasn’t particularly cared about her coach’s, ahem, extracurricular, activities before.

But now he has begun to give her so much more than gymnastics. When she sees him and Summer together outside his trailer, she freezes momentarily; his shoulders bely none of the businesslike, exasperated tension of the coach she knows and he is laughing privately, freely. She wonders if she, in her too small and yet too large skin, is little more than a project to him. She wonders how she can know him so little if he knows how to blow life into every last limb of her body. She wonders that this man, the one before her, is undocumented yet, and still not hers to document, and something clenches hard and painful in her chest. 

Perhaps, she thinks later lying in her bed and staring at an unmoving ceiling, perhaps she knows nothing. Perhaps he is trying to tell her a lie until it becomes the truth. Perhaps she is the unsure person she knows herself to be, scrabbling at the last vestiges of her girlhood like a brick wall she will never scale, perhaps she just wants so badly to be the focused, unstoppable girl she had thought herself to be that she has managed to convince herself she is not foolish. Worship is dangerous, she thinks in an ignored corner of her mind. She fingers his medal over her chest. 

All those hours with Sasha, alone, have begun to spin in her head. Payson-the-gymnast has thinned her waist to allow for Payson-the-girl, and yet she thinks that he cannot see her as more than one or the other. Sasha must know, she allows, what it is to be ambition, to want every motion to be a threat to doubt, even when every motion is indeed doubt itself. 

Is that determination but a familiar costume, for him? Has he known it so long that he knows to wield and wear it? Or could he call it to him at will, as he clutched at the rings and bars, and then recede to that lazy normalcy that she fears will emerge as a byproduct of her own adolescence, that she detests so well? Maybe Payson is just a better dreamer than most, singular in her destination, overwrought in its pursuit. The medal is cold and gleaming against her chest, and she feels briefly psychotic, wondering if her lack of purchase makes her distinctly less deserving. Payson had always thought everyone else the fool for not wanting anything as she did, but now she thinks that she is the fool, never having possessed the seeming effortlessness she sees all about her. Nothing, she thinks in vaguely misguided hindsight, has seemed natural to her for a very long time now. To be champion has always meant to her to have the weight of all her being concentrated, day and night; she cannot imagine herself without the impulse she has embroidered into her limbs, she cannot imagine herself with loose shoulders. The part of herself that had assumed her eventual championship had identified with him a little too obsequiously, but now she thinks that perhaps that they are not cut from the same cloth. Perhaps she was not meant for this, perhaps Sasha sees her as something she’s not, perhaps she is not worthy of all his time. And yet. And yet. 

_Who is Sasha Belov?_

Her heart clenches again. 

Payson falls asleep clutching his Olympic gold, too tired to think straight. 

__

She jogs it into a dark, giggling corner of her mind the next morning, because Payson Keeler is nothing if not unshakeable. Still, the tension in her is shamefully unmistakeable.

“Draw your arms in further on the turn.” Sasha tells her. “It will give you better momentum.”

She does as he says, switching to the ball of her foot and swinging herself with less finesse than she would like, and then his hands are in hers and he is before her. She is certain for a moment that her breath catches audibly at his touch, but perhaps he simply doesn’t notice because he continues on, unperturbed. “Relax.” he says. “Loosen your shoulders.”    
Payson nods, and flinches as his hands move to her wrists. Their eyes meet for an instant, and she immediately averts her gaze. Her heart is pounding in her chest now. She wonders when _Payson Keeler_ became lost to her. For at least a week, she cannot bring herself to meet his eyes. 

___  
On Saturday, two weeks later, there is a training camera waiting for her at the Rock. 

“You are expert at each separate component, but your flow must be indomitable.” Sasha says. It is just the two of them, and outside, the sun is slowly drowning. “I think you can achieve that by watching yourself perform the routine. Alright? ” 

She must look uncertain, because he gives her a smile and softens minutely, momentarily. Two weeks ago she would not have noticed the softening of the muscles his face, but now she has begun to observe him keenly. 

“Payson.” he offers. “You _can_ do this.” 

Only three attempts later, she feels exhausted. 

“Can I- can I have a minute?” 

His brows come together, and the word adorable comes to mind briefly, but she shakes it away. 

“Are you okay, Payson?” The concern in his words is enough to let her believe that he actually cares as much as she does- _of course he does, he’s your coach, why don’t you trust him, you’re a fool, Keeler, a bloody fool_ \- and this is why she needs a minute. She is sure she is going mad. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

Payson jogs to the far end of the gym, sinks against the wall, out of his sight, and buries her face in her hands. 

_Who is Sasha Belov?_

She can hear her breaths coming out in shallow puffs. It is not quite a panic attack, but her heart pounds relentlessly in her chest, and she wonders if she’ll ever be able to do what he says she can. For the very first time, she wants to go home. 

“Payson? Payson, where are you-- oh.” 

Sasha crouches before her. “Payson.”

She looks down at her knees resolutely. 

“I know how difficult this is. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to push you.” 

_You’re not pushing me, she thinks, it just turns out I’m really fucking weak._ Instead, what comes out is a snort of unbridled derision. “Do you really?”

He takes her hands in his, and they are, she observes, not nearly as rough as she might have expected. Rather, they are coated with a sheen of sweat, bear the sign of long-gone calluses, and are inexplicably gentle on hers. “Do you trust me?” 

Well. That’s quite a question. “Sasha,” she utters softly, “you’re telling me all of this to make me feel better, aren’t you. I know I can’t really do all of this. I don’t have nearly half the capacity-”

“Payson.”

She looks up then, and his eyes are so blue that she can feel the color stain her. In that instant she is not sure she can think of anything else. 

“Payson, if I didn’t think you could do every inch of this, I wouldn’t be wasting my time on it.”

Her brows furrow incredulously. “Wasting your time?”

“No! No, that’s not what I meant. I--” He runs a hand through his hair. “What I mean to say is, I trust you.”

And then before she has the time to process his words, he is pulling her to her feet, and despite herself, she is smiling wider than she has in weeks. He takes her not to the floor, but to the office, her hand still tight in his, she breathless, he grinning. In response to her quizzical glance, he says simply, “You’ll see.” 

In the office, he opens the freezer, and pulls out two bowls and a vat of ice cream. All Payson can think is, they have ice cream in the gym? 

Sasha plops the vat on the desk, and presents her a bowl with a sound clink of glass-on-wood. He is still grinning. 

“Payson,” he says, “I hope you like chocolate.”

__

Half an hour later, they are still at his desk, and there is nothing left in the vat but chocolate residue. 

“Just this once.” Sasha says sternly. “We’re not going to make a habit out of this.”   
She shakes her head rigorously, taste of chocolate still in her mouth. “I aim to be an Olympic gymnast, not an Olympic ice-cream eater.” 

He snorts softly. “Glad to hear it.” 

There is a long silence. Payson thinks that she doesn’t particularly care who Sasha is if he can make her Payson Keeler again.  
“You know, you’re almost there. You shouldn’t get disheartened now.” 

Payson exhales. “Sasha, I think I’m losing myself. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

In response, he smiles at her. “It’s not called losing yourself. It’s called changing.”

She looks up from her lap, and there they are again- his excruciatingly blue eyes, piercing hers. She swallows hard, and is hit by a strong urge to lean forward and do--something, though she doesn’t know exactly what. 

The phone rings. Both she and Sasha start, and he fumbles with the receiver for a minute. 

“Hello?”

She can hear the distinct tone of her mother’s voice on the line. “Yeah,” Sasha says, “she’s with me. I’ll have her home in twenty. What’s that? No, she stopped training a little while ago. Alright. Okay. See you, Kim.”

“Better get you home, then?” 

She nods curtly. 

“Come on. I’ll give you a ride.” 

She stares. “You don’t have a car.”

“I’ll drive yours. Come on.” 

They spend the walk to her car in silence. The engine starts with a low growl, and she finds herself questioning whether Sasha can actually drive. He exceeds her expectations when he stops at a stop sign. 

“Wow,” she says before she can help herself- god, Keeler, you fool, what are you doing-”you actually stopped.”

Sasha looks at her blankly, and she is sure she flushes with embarrassment. “It’s a stop sign. Did you think I’d go faster?” 

“Sort of, yeah.”

He snorts. “I’m not that bad, Payson.”

“Oh.”

They stop at a light a minute later, and Payson think she must be really tired because the lights emanating from the CVS opposite them seem blinding.  
“Is that what that book that you keep reading said about me?” She snaps her head toward him, but he is looking straight ahead. “That I’m reckless.”

Payson clears her throat. She can still taste the chocolate. “Kind of.”

“You don’t need a book to know me, Payson.”

The light turns green. She swallows for what feels like the hundredth time. 

“I- I don’t know that much about you. I mean, the book talked about you growing up in Romania and stuff. That’s not stuff you talk about to m--to us.” 

Who is Sasha Belov?

A smile is creeping slowly across his face. “I grew up on a farm in Romania.”

She frowns. “Really? The book--”

“There were sheep,” he interrupts, “and cattle. When I was seven, an ewe gave birth. I named the lamb Biscuit. My mother was a bit flummoxed.” 

“You were a farm boy?”

Sasha is glowing with mirth now. “No.” 

And then he is guffawing, and she is laughing so hard her stomach hurts, though she is not entirely sure why, and through it all she asks ‘why Biscuit?’ but he laugh and laughs and doesn’t answer and the world spins about her momentarily, and nothing has felt this natural in years. It is glorious.  
__

At home that night, she dawdles with a scarp of math homework, a small smile plastered onto her mouth. The integral of the exponential function is the exponential function, as is the derivative. It is beneath itself, above itself, soaring at each infinitesimal vertex of itself. For the first time, Payson thinks that the world, in its own strange way, is an exceedingly pretty place. 

__

Kaylie has had an expression of permanent exasperation on her since Nationals. Payson has begun to avoid her so as to avoid the temptation of physically wiping it off. At the same time, though, she wonders what exactly Kaylie is trying to compensate for. 

On Monday morning, she enters the gym to see Sasha and Kaylie in a corner. Sasha appears to be yelling at her, and Kaylie looks incredulous, indignant, a retort poised on her pretty mouth. She drops her bag by the wall and begins to warm up, sparing them a glance every few seconds. Soon enough, Kaylie storms away. She looks gaunt, Payson thinks suddenly. Too gaunt. There are shadows outlining each contour of her body. 

Sasha is striding toward her, though, and Kaylie is forgotten. “Payson.” he greets. 

“Yeah?”

“I want you to try the beam today. Try the motions of your tumbling passes, slowly. I think that as you stumble less, you will gain a flow of motion.”

Payson does as he says, picking herself up toward the beam. She is beginning to learn the adjectives of his smell now; musk and smoke, washed away cologne, and something still unnamed. She thinks that she trusts her coach, but not Sasha, yet. Perhaps Sasha is irrelevant- but she does not want him to be and so her heart clenches, tellingly. 

__

In the evening, it is just the two of them and a training camera. 

“Feel, Payson!” Sasha cries. “Feel! I know you have it in you--”

She feels, suddenly, as if she is flying, though her feet are on the ground, and she knows this because Sasha has grown silent, a distant, pale blur in the corner of her eye, but all she can think of are his eyes, blue and endless. She is the swan, and he- what is he? The lake? Momentarily she thinks that maybe all of this is because she feels too much--

And then she finishes, and Sasha is running toward her, and she is in his arms, and he spins her once, twice. That was magnificent, he is saying, I always knew you could--

“Did you, really?” she asks. 

He nods, and it is a split moment before she realizes she is looking up into his eyes; one portion of her freezes resolutely, the other continues to surge forth, that inexplicable urge returning to every limb- feel, Payson, feel- and she does not completely realize what she is doing until her lips are pressed to his. Briefly, she registers his warmth. Is this who he is, she wonders, outside obligation? 

_Who is Sasha Belov?_

Sasha’s eyes go wide, and she jumps back in shock, one hand coming to her lips. 

“Oh god.” Her voice does not feel like her own. “Oh god, oh god, oh god--” 

“Payson--”

She runs.


	2. Chapter 2

She drives on local roads for longer than she knows, making random turn after random turn and going in circles several times before she winds up at a Starbucks, of all the places. Fucking Starbucks. 

The sun’s fully sunk in the sky and she’s in the suburbs, which means that the Starbucks is closed. Payson rests her forehead on the wheel. Somewhere above her, a low voice crooning along with a tambourine and a guitar emanates from an underwhelming speaker. She is still in her leotard, purple and girlish, the material taut and strained, sweat cooling all sticky against her skin. A car honks somewhere in the street, and-- she’s in her _leotard_ , and she left her gym bag at the Rock, and she’s not wearing pants, and _oh god what is she doing?_

_Okay. Okay._

She wonders what Sasha must think of her now, and her chest flares. She’d thought she’d been growing up in reinventing herself, but really she’d just been sinking into the most predictable sort of adolescence, hadn’t she. All that progress, the relentless energy she had put– that they had put– into regaining the reins to her own body, and all she has to show for it is that she’s a child. A child. There’s no doubt now that that’s exactly what she is, Payson thinks. Somewhere between deciding to cultivate the Payson who wasn’t a gymnast and teaching herself to lose control, she’s managed to turn herself into a fanciful little kid. Or worse– maybe she’s been like this all along, and it was just a matter of time before something managed to yank out the pole up her ass long enough to reveal it. Just a couple of months of her hard-ass coach acting human and she’s reduced to a fangirl. No better than Kaylie or Lauren, who take the time to flash coquettish smiles even as they’re poised upon an apparatus, Payson decides. The only difference is that Kaylie and Lauren know to pursue people, instead of flinging themselves at men on haphazard impulse. 

Next to her, her phone begins to buzz. Payson glances at it, sees Kim Keeler flashing at her in a mocking marquee. God, she’s two hours late home and her mom’s probably worried sick. The frisson of guilt that passes through her at this is quickly trumped by dread because oh fuck Sasha’s probably told her mom what she’s done and that’s the very last thing she wants to talk about to anyone right now. She lets it ring until it sputters quiet and lights up with another missed call. 

There are six voicemails from her mother, Payson sees, along with two from Becca and one from Sasha. She palms the phone haphazardly in an attempt at avoidance, but somehow, she ends up pressing play instead and her mother’s voice fills the car almost immediately. 

Payson freezes. 

_Hey honey! How’s that floor routine going? Anyway, let me know when you’re heading home, Becca’s chewing my head off about this math homework and I told her you’d help, since you’re good with numbers and all. Okay. See you soon!_

A beep. 

_Pay, Sasha called, he said you ran off... Where are you? He said you left your gym bag behind. Call me, okay? It’s going to be alright._

A beep. 

_It’s me again. Come home. A pause, some static. Payson, I’m not mad at you and neither is Sasha. He said he doesn’t want this to derail your training. Please come home._

Beep. 

_Where are you? It’s been an hour since Sasha called. I called Chloe and she said Emily has no idea where you are, and Ronnie says Kaylie doesn’t know either.... are you with Lo? Call me back. Please._

Beep. 

_I’m worried, Pay. It’s not like you to disappear like this. Please call me._

Beep. 

_Payson, baby, where are you?_ There’s a pause, then a noise that sounds suspiciously like a sniffle. _I’m scared. Please don’t hurt yourself over something this stupid. We all do dumb stuff sometimes, okay? You don’t have to be perfect all the time. Sasha’s worried too. He cares about you so much, sweetheart, I know he does. He’s not mad at you, Pay, he understands and he just wants to work through it. I know you two will work this out real quickly. Please come home. Please. I love you._

A beep, then Sasha’s voice and no no no she can’t do this right now. But out of what must be sheer masochism, her hands stay on the steering wheel, gripping it so hard her knuckles hurt. 

_Payson. Your mum called again. You’re – I’m worried. Call her. Or call me. Or– come to the trailer, I’m still here, we can talk it out._ A pause. _Your left your gym bag here._ Another pause. _Just– call someone, alright?_

She turns the phone off. Shudders out a breath. 

_Do you trust me– that was magnificent I always knew you could– he cares about you so much– please come home please– I’m still here we can talk it out I’m still here._

Still here.

She turns the key in ignition. She has to get some sleep if she wants to go to the gym tomorrow, after all. 

––––––––

“I know it seems awkward,” her mother says, “but Sasha wants the three of us to talk before practice today. Just to get things back on track.” 

Payson groans loudly and drops her spoon into her cereal with a splash. “Do we have to? I just want to– you know. Move on. This doesn’t seem like it’ll do that.” 

“Sasha’s just being responsible, honey. He has to. You’ll move on.” 

“Mom–”

“You have a crush, Pay–” 

“ _Had._ Or like– it wasn’t even a crush, I don’t even know what it was honestly–”

“Come on. You have a crush. Crushes don’t just disappear over night. You can be open with me about this. I get it. He gets it. He’s an adult. He’s not going to decimate you. He just wants to talk it out so it doesn’t get in the way of your training.” 

“You keep saying that!” Payson’s almost yelling now. “How can you expect this to not get in the way of my training? You know I kissed him, right? Kissed him. How are we supposed to get past that?”

“Give Sasha some credit, Pay. I’m sure you two will work it out.” 

“How are we supposed to work it out when I can’t even face him?”

“You’re going to have to face him in twenty minutes. Besides, the more you get yourself in knots over this, the more it’s going to interfere with your training.”

Payson sighs. “I just wish– that I hadn’t. I wasn’t thinking, you know? At all.” 

Her mother’s mouth quirks exasperatedly. “Clearly. You can’t go back in time, though. Come on now. We’re getting late.” 

___

The drive to the Rock is spent in excruciating silence. Payson stares resolutely at the floor of her mother’s car, counts the rows of thread in the carpet until she feels motion sick. 

Sasha greets them at the door with a smile so painful that it borders on a grimace. “Kim! Payson!” 

Without the weight of her gym bag on her shoulder, Payson feels so incredibly fallible. She focuses on a shadow under Sasha’s knee and refuses to look away from it. “We’re so sorry for making you open up an hour early,” her mother is saying. “I’m sure you have a long day ahead too–” 

“Don’t worry about it.” Sasha says gruffly. “I should be apologizing. I asked for this time, yeah?” 

The shadow under Sasha’s knee dissolves itself once they step inside, and Payson reluctantly begins to focus on the scar on his shin instead. She wonders where he got it, wonders if the skin around it is somehow more sensitive and a small spool of heat makes its way into her chest at the thought– stop, she tells herself emphatically. Keeler, you complete fuckwit. Maybe she should get another coach. Move out. Move gyms. She feels less capable of salvaging this than she did doing a stylistic one-eighty on her gymnastics. 

Her mom slumps into her usual seat, and Payson loiters in a corner awkwardly. Sasha huffs out a breath. 

“There’s no good way to ease into this bit of the conversation, so I’m just going to be blunt. Well.” Sasha pauses and runs a hand through his hair. “I had a training camera on last night, and all of what happened was captured. I was going to just delete the bit at the end for everyone’s benefit, but then it occurred to me that you might want to look at it–” and here he looks pointedly at her mom– “if you had any doubts about what occurred last night, wanted to confirm that nothing untoward occurred, that what I said happened was what actually happened, that sort of thing.” 

Payson’s head snaps up in horror. “Don’t watch it.” Her voice feels swollen and lopsided in her throat. “Please.” 

Her mother looks between Sasha and Payson for a long moment. “Honestly, Sasha, it didn’t ever really occur to me that that was a possibility until you said it. I suppose, though, to be safe...”

Bile rises in Payson’s throat. “Don’t watch it. Please. I’ll just– tell you what happened and it’ll match up with what he told you happened and you’ll know we’re both telling the truth, okay? This isn’t on him at all, please, mom.” 

Her mother sighs and nods. “Okay, Pay.” 

Payson swallows. “Well. I was doing a run-through on floor, and it went really well, so Sasha hugged me, and I– I kissed him–” here she looks away instinctively– “and he freaked out and pushed me away, and I panicked and ran.” She gestures at the room roughly. “And here we are.” 

Her mom shrugs. “Alright, fine. That’s about what you told me, Sasha. I trust both of you. Feel free to delete the tape.” 

Relief floods Payson’s chest, and Sasha nods. “Alright then,” he says. “I wanted the three of us to have a conversation just to be sure that none of this interferes with your training. You’re making such marvelous progress, and I don’t want anything to get in the way of that.” 

This is it, Payson thinks. She can admit that she’s a hormonal child and give up or she can look him in the eye and move forward. 

“There’s nothing to get in the way of anything.” she says. “You know how incredibly intense gymnastics can be. Yesterday was just an unfortunate result of that, and I want to apologize for it, promise you it will never happen again, and– move on.” She swallows. “I actually really wanted to talk to you about starting to train properly on beam again, I think I could start trying for a triple twisting layout in the pit, if that’s okay with you? I think it’d be less of a strain on me than a double back tuck even though that’s less difficult–” 

Sasha puts up a hand, motioning for her to stop talking. “Just-- work on vault for a bit. I want to see better lines on your DTY. Do you think you can train that in the pit after warming up?” 

She nods as resolutely as she can. “Is there anything in particular you want to me to do to warm up?” 

“Just the usual strength test stuff that Marta makes you do. Hold handstands on beam, do rope, whatever you think you need to do. You don’t need my instruction for everything, Payson.” 

Payson jogs out of the office before he can say anything else. She holds her handstand for an extra minute, climbs the ropes over and over until her hands burn raw. 

–––

Vault practice is an unmitigated disaster. Payson bounces into the pit ass-first more times than she can count, and when she doesn’t, she’s not twisting at all. At one point, she throws a two and a half out of sheer frustration and lands on her back, then rolls onto her face with a groan. 

Sasha’s at the other end of the gym yelling at Kaylie about sloppy legs on floor, his back to her. The assistant coach supervising her– Jake? John?– has long since given up on instructing her, and is instead looking determinedly at his clipboard. Payson sighs, blows pit-foam out of her mouth, and makes her way dejectedly to the chalk bowl. 

Lauren’s there too, and gives her the strangest look. 

“Not to be awful, Payson,” she says, “but is everything okay? I’ve seen your floor, so it’s not like you can’t twist or your back’s acting up or anything, but if Marta saw whatever it is you’ve been doing on vault for the last couple of hours, there’s no way you’d ever get back on the national team.” She waves a handful of chalk onto Payson’s leotard, and Payson jumps back. “Ever.” 

“I’m fine. We all have off days, you know.” 

“Yeah, but there’s off and then there’s off.” Lauren shrugs pointedly. “You’re beyond off. Seriously, is everything okay?” 

“Yeah, I’m –” 

“Lauren! Payson!” Sasha’s striding toward them. “Any more chit chat and it’s thirty laps. Payson, beam?” 

Payson gives Lauren an apologetic shrug and nods at Sasha. 

“While I think your suggestion about the dismount has some merit, I think we should spent quite some time focusing on sticking the meat of your routine. I have a couple of tweaks in mind once we do that–– a side somersault and a switch leap full turn, I think? I want you to improve the lines on some of your connections.” 

He’s so brisk, Payson thinks. None of yesterday’s exuberance or levity, none of that soaring omnipotence in her chest, but she doesn’t have time to grieve it because it does not matter, she reminds herself– there is nothing to grieve, really. She mounts the beam, does every skill like it is a task, relishing none of it; when she wobbles, she does not bother to save it with a flourish. 

“Flic-flac with a quarter twist to a handstand.” 

Payson does the skill, holds the handstand for a moment too long. 

“Do you think you can do the aerial cartwheel across the beam, or do you want to do it on the floor a few times? I know it’s been a while.” 

She shakes her head. “No, I think I’ll just try it here.” 

She’s just beginning to point her foot in front of her when Sasha interrupts her. “You need to extend your arms more if you want to keep your balance.” 

Payson makes a show of stretching her arms away from her. “I am extending my arms.” 

Sasha steps forward, reaches for her arms. “No, like this–” 

Just as he’s about to grasp her wrists, he jolts to a stop. Payson can hear his breath stutter, watches as something like regret curls around his expression. His arm stays there, suspended between them. He can’t even touch me, she thinks. God. She hops off the beam unceremoniously. 

“I need a break.” she says, and to her embarrassment, her voice cracks a little. For the second time in twenty four hours, she runs out the doors. 

––––

Sasha finds her on the curb, picking at the edge of a new callous. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. 

She looks up at him, then looks back down at her hands, the callous. “For what? This is on me, Sasha. I’ve ruined everything.” 

“No, it’s not.” He settles next to her. “You haven’t ruined anything. I– I shouldn’t have hesitated, just then. And I kind of bollocksed up that meeting this morning, didn’t I?” 

Payson shakes her head. “No, you were just being responsible. I get it. Really.” 

“There were about a thousand better ways I could have gone about it, though. I don’t think I could’ve been more awkward if I’d tried.” 

Payson gives him a wry smile. “You did tell me to go do Marta’s strength test stuff for warm-ups. And like, you do not like her. Remember the time you said– and I quote– ‘This gym is not under the reign of Marta’s dictatorship. You are gymnasts, not servants.’?”

Sasha laughs genuinely at that. “Touché. Her camels are kind of cute, though. I’ll give her that.” 

Payson grins. “Come on. She’s not that bad.” 

“She seems to periodically forget that the national team is a diverse body of teenage girls.” Sasha huffs. “Human girls. How is that ‘not bad’?” 

“It’s like you want us to disrespect her or something. Besides, doesn’t she like you?” 

“I like her too, when we’re having a glass of scotch together or something. I respect her as a coach, even. Deeply. Just not when she’s screeching at an assistant to send leos back because they aren’t shiny enough.” 

Payson snorts. “Don’t remind me. It’s like she wants American gymnastics to be Toddlers and Tiaras on steroids.” Sasha gives her a quizzical look. “Bad reality show,” she explains. “about child beauty pageants. It’s on Becca’s list of guilty pleasures.” 

“Dear god.” Sasha chuckles. “You probably would’ve quite literally planted explosives at the venue if someone had tried to enter you into one of those.”

“You’re not wrong,” she returns. 

Sasha grins back at her for a moment, then sobers suddenly. “Look, Payson,” he says, “I– tangents on Marta aside, I want to tell you that I don’t blame you. For any of this.” 

Payson quirks an eyebrow at that. “You don’t blame me.” 

“I don’t.” 

She schools her face into the most serious expression she can muster. “So,” she says, “what you’re saying is that you’re just so irresistible that I can’t be blamed for trying to make out with you.” 

Sasha blushes outright, and she laughs, because she’s never thought brash, blunt, impulsive Sasha Belov capable of blushing. It’s kind of endearing actually, she thinks, then halts the thought before it can go any further. 

“No, no, no,” he says hastily, “I just meant that– the relationship between any coach and athlete is incredibly intimate, and it’s based on trust and loyalty, and– a certain kind of love, even. So if my coach had been a girl, I probably would’ve tried to kiss him, too.”

Payson’s eyes widen incredulously. “Did you just say that if your dad had been a girl, you would’ve tried to jump him?” 

Sasha guffaws for a long minute. “Not my dad. Nikolai. Speaking of my dad, though, he’s really good friends with Marta and Bela. Which explains quite a lot about both my dad and Marta, really.” 

Payson tilts her head in agreement, even though she’s never met his dad. “Nikolai who you dedicated your book to, right?” He nods.

“Are you the sort of coach Nikolai was, then?” 

“I wouldn’t say that. It was more like– I was an arrogant little shit when I first came to him, and he challenged me and pushed me beyond my limits in a way that was so much more than physical. We had to understand each other deeply as people in order to function as coach and athlete. That’s true of us too, I think.” Sasha looks her directly in the eye as he says this, and Payson has to fight to meet his gaze. Bullshit, she thinks inwardly. She doesn’t think she understands him at all, let alone deeply. 

“He changed me as an athlete by changing me as a person. And– that wasn’t always easy, obviously. We used to shout at each other a lot, believe me. Even brawled with each other once. Or twice.” Sasha lets out a sharp laugh. “At the end of the day, hough, we believed in each other unconditionally. But, in order for me to trust him with a matter so deeply rooted in my body–which gymnastics undeniably is– I had to trust him with my heart, in a way. And that’s what I meant, when I said that it was a kind of love. There were moments between Nikolai and me that were so intense that I could hardly bear it. Looking at it that way, girl or not, trying to kiss him wouldn’t have been highly unusual, to say the least. ” 

“So I’m not crazy.” Payson says quietly. Allows herself a small smile.

Sasha shrugs. “Jury’s still out on that, but not in this respect, no.” 

She swats his thigh lightly. “Just so you know,” she says, “I am so not letting go that you would’ve gone a little gay for your coach.” 

Sasha shakes his head. “Shut up, you.”

“So we’re okay, then.” 

“Payson. When are we not okay?” Sasha smiles at her softly. “I should’ve had this conversation with you this morning instead of treating this as some big, bureaucratic misstep,” he says. “Maybe then you wouldn’t have spent half the day utterly bungling your DTY. I don’t think I’ve ever seen worse gymnastics from you.” 

It’s Payson’s turn to blush, then. She buries her face in her hands. “I was hoping you hadn’t noticed that.” 

“Not a chance.” 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” 

“Honestly, I thought it might lead to a shouting match. A shouting match which I neither had any idea how to manage nor any energy to manage.” 

Payson looks away. “Sorry.” 

“Don’t apologize.” Sasha says. “I don’t blame you, remember? Besides, I had more pressing problems with Kaylie at the time. And you’re going to make it up to me by showing me the DTY now. This break has been long enough.” He stands, holds out a hand. “Ready?” 

Payson grins and holds out her hand in return. “Ready.” 

She thinks Sasha’s about to pull her up, but then he frowns. “Christ, Pay, what happened to your hand?” 

Payson shrugs. “Callouses. I do gymnastics, ergo I have them.” 

“I know what a gymnast’s hands look like, Payson. Yours look more like those of a burn victim less than week into recovery.”

She laughs. “Harsh, Sasha.” 

“What on earth did you do to them?”

She shrugs again. “Might’ve gone a little hard on the ropes this morning.” 

“We might need to curb your clear talent for self flagellation sooner rather than later.” Sasha shakes his head. “Get some aloe on that after practice.” 

She wrinkles her nose. “You sound like my mom.” 

Sasha ignores her. “Alright, you’re back on beam. You’ve got to wrap your hands before any more vaulting.” 

“How would I ever make up this morning’s unforgettably horrible practice to you, then?”

Sasha grins. “By dedicating your autobiography to me.” 

Payson stands, brushes dirt off of her thighs, starts to walk toward the doors. “Eh,” she says. “We’ll see if you make the cut.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Marta is Marta Karolyi. Training camps are the monthly camps that members of the national team attend every month in real life at the Karolyi ranch in Texas. Payson did not attempt to petition onto the national team as she did on the show: instead, she has been training at the Rock (and only at the Rock) since returning to gymnastics and rehabilitating, and has not returned to training camp yet. In real life, gymnasts can only be added to the national team at a training camp, following a high performance (e.g. top 6 in AA, or first on an event) in a large meet. 
> 
> Lauren knows nothing of the training tape of Payson kissing Sasha here, if that is not already apparent.

**III**

“Lauren’s definitely Regina George.” Becca says. “Or worse. Gretchen Weiners. Can you imagine her being all like–” she launches into a high-pitched voice– “ _my Daddy! The inventor of toaster strudel!”_

They’re lying on their stomachs on Becca’s bed, and Payson’s painting Becca’s nails. Payson gives a gasp that is only half sincere. “So mean, Becca. She’s had it rough sometimes, you know.”

“What? It’s true.” Becca wrinkles her nose and scrutinizes Payson’s handiwork. A spot of pale pink is dripping down the front of her big toe. “How are you not good at this?” 

Payson rolls her eyes. “Do it yourself, then.” 

Becca grabs at a tissue and hastily wipes away the offending blob of polish. “Don’t you do make-up for competitions?” 

“Yeah, but that doesn’t usually involve painting my nails. Plus, Gretchen Weiners and Kaylie usually do most of it for me.” Payson shrugs. “Come on,” she says, then straightens her chin and does her worst British accent. “Surely there are other ways in which I can improve your birthday festivities.” 

Becca giggles. “I’ll stop making fun of you if you let me braid your hair.” 

“Done.” Payson turns around and yanks the elastic away from her haphazard bun. “All yours.” 

Becca has always relished braiding Payson’s hair. _Rapunzel hair,_ she’d call it, even at the age of three, toddling about the house with a lisp– and it caught on, until even her stiff, Midwestern grandmother would ruffle her hair fondly and call her _Rapunzel,_ until Payson believed staunchly that every last ounce of her prettiness was concentrated solely in her blonde mess, that her hair was some singular trophy of girlhood that she should hold onto with an iron fist. But her mane tangled so profusely and easily that there was almost never any room for vanity, especially not in the germ-ridden roughhousing of elementary school, and even less so in the gym. Her mother had never been dextrous enough to braid it properly, and Payson had never been patient enough to try, so even in school, Payson had always donned some incarnation of a bun, shrugged it off, and made her way to class with budding resignation. By the annual play came around and she was unceremoniously cast as the prince, she’d already been canonized in the second grade hall of fame as short, stocky, quiet-and-therefore-snobby Payson who was good at math and _really_ good at gymnastics, and the only time the other girls grudgingly gushed at her in awe was when Ms. Lanford had insisted on showing them a tape of her floor routine at some Level 7 regional meet in class. When Payson had come home dejected, unmoved by everyone’s reassurances that _the prince is always the coolest part anyway_ , she’d locked herself in her room and fiercely imagined everyone instead telling her, _you’re the prettiest girl ever but it’s a family secret for now, okay?_

Later that year, Becca had walked into Payson’s room insisting that she’d learned to braid hair. Payson had been eight and Becca had been five. She’d watched Mrs. Willis, their teacher, braid Sarah-Marie Stockton’s hair after recess, she said, and Payson had listened to her bouncing, frilly sister with hope bubbling up in her chest that yes she could be pretty, yes she could be Rapunzel in public, yes. Becca had set to her hair with a comb she could barely fit in her little hand. They’d never gotten around to the braiding, though, because the comb had wound itself so tightly in her hair that neither she nor Becca could get it out. The two of them had run to their parents hyperventilating, and their dad had stood bewildered as their mother announced that they’d be skipping dinner in favor of an emergency trip to SuperCuts. The hairdresser had cut away the comb into bangs that Payson proceeded to pin back meticulously every morning, hating how the fringe made her small face look even smaller, hating that she’d had to cut her hair at all.

 

Becca had cried so much in the aftermath that their mother had bought her dolls to practice on. They’d piled up slowly on Becca’s floor after that, a craze of knots, black and brown and blonde and red, even one that sported a blue shock that rushed from her toy scalp. When Ginny, a redhead with large blue plastic eyes, appeared in Becca’s arms nearly two years later with a well-done, if not perfect braid down her velcro-covered back, everyone had been so relieved that their parents had whisked them away to Olive Garden to celebrate almost immediately. Payson had had a year of neat braids at school before she’d stopped going entirely.

“Will you take Avery and me to the mall?” Becca says. “I want to buy heels and I don’t know if Mom will let me. Nothing too high, of course,” she says quickly upon seeing Payson begin to frown. “Just baby ones. Like two inches.”

“Okay,” Payson acquiesces. “Give it a bit though, yeah? Your nails need to dry.”

__

“My house is about to be invaded by fourteen year old girls,” Payson says, and Emily flicks a crumb of bread at her.

“You’re making it sound as though you’re thirty, Payson.” 

She groans. “I’m not going to get any sleep.” 

“Not like you have to come in tomorrow. It’ll be a Sunday, you know.” 

“I still have to do my three mile circuit, though. I don’t think that’s going to happen anymore.” 

Kaylie strides up to them and sets her food down, her expression pinched. “I’m very glad that you take your conditioning so seriously, Payson. If you really need some peace and quiet tonight, you can stay at my place. My dad’s at a family wedding in Cali for the weekend, so you’re welcome to come over. It won’t be an intrusion at all. I use the treadmill in the mornings, so I’d appreciate the company.”

“Um.” Payson thinks about it for a moment. Kaylie looks like her expression’s about to freeze in her perpetual grimace of a smile, but her house _does_ have five different ellipticals, so. “I might take you up on that.”

“Wait,” says Lauren. She’s got an unmistakeable glint in her eyes. “What if we made a night of it? It’s been so long since we’ve had a sleepover. Just the three of us.” Payson winces– Emily’s already looking away in that awkward way that she does, like she knows that she’s not really supposed to be _here,_ with them, like she’s accustomed to it. Kaylie, whose house is being volunteered for this spontaneous shindig, is turning up her chin at Lauren. 

“We don’t have time to waste giggling and staying up.” Kaylie says. “We’re not kids anymore. And don’t forget that we have to fly to training camp tomorrow evening. But a bonding exercise for almost an _entire fifth of the national team_ wouldn’t be a bad idea!” She plasters on a smile cut and paste from a dental catalogue. “What do you say, girls? Emily?” 

Emily, barely looking up, nods uncomfortably. 

“Great!” exclaims Kaylie, and Payson’s just about to give up all pretense of propriety and bury her face in her her hands when it occurs to her. 

“Wait,” she says slowly, “did you just insinuate that I’m on the national team? Because I don’t know if you missed the bit where I nearly kicked the bucket– or the bit where I’m not coming to Texas with you guys–but I’m very much not.” 

Lauren furrows her brow almost incredulously. “You’re shitting me.” she says. “I hate to say it, but your DOD on floor looks the same as mine and Emily’s, you probably have higher difficulty on bars than any of us from what I’ve seen, and it’s only going to go up from here unless you go snap your neck. Did you really think that you were going to sit around playing _Eat, Pray, Love_ with gymnastics forever? Besides, Sasha literally threatened that Marta’d make me sit out training camp and make you do your Gienger-to-Pak over and over in front of me if I didn’t start trying on bars.” She takes a large swig of water to emphasize her point. “If you’re not on the team now, you’re about to be. Honestly, I’m shocked that you’re not going to be at the ranch this month.” 

__

And then Payson cannot stop thinking about it, the thought latching onto her mind like a plague. She swings around and around the high bar to dizzy herself in tandem with it, paces in circles around the chalk bowl until the minutes begin to feel like bruises of their own. 

It’s just an offhand comment, she tells herself, and so she’s too afraid to ask Sasha whether it’s true. What if Lauren had just been doing what she usually did– goading her? It i _s_ Lauren, she reminds herself– Lauren who must have squirmed out of the womb with the instinct for hushed gossip and sleepover parties lining her stomach– and Lauren knows her well enough to realize that singing her praises will psych her out now more than hurling barbs at her ever could. After all, it’s been nearly two months since she’s started nailing her floor routine, and three since she was first able get through a respectable bars session with Tara without drowning in her own nausea at the thought. If Sasha had thought her ready to go back to training camp, he would’ve told her already, wouldn’t he? She has to trust him, she reminds herself, has to trust that he understands her well enough to know when she is ready to stretch her courage past the quiet, dusty rhythm of the Rock.

Still, something in Payson sings at the thought of returning to the thrumming everyday of knowing competition. She’s been pushing down the twinge she feels every month when Sasha disappears with the other girls for a week at training camp, and she knows the feeling’s not just one of being excluded. She desperately misses the heady, eager discipline of striving, of challenging herself without the dull uncertainty and need for approval that’s settled into her bones ever since she’s started training again. Yes, Sasha is giving her her body back, but it _is_ her body, she thinks. She’s far from being a marionette on his strings, or anyone’s, and she wants to train for something more than what’s within the walls of her and the walls of the gym, oh how she wants and wants it. 

Payson does her laps and shoulder crunches dutifully with everyone else during the afternoon session, does back tucks across the floor to Tara’s shouts of _next, next, next_ and still the nervous anticipation squirms quietly in her stomach. She does back handsprings across the beam, connecting them again and again and still the feeling will not let her go. 

She corners Sasha during his dinner break, just as everyone else is leaving. Summer’s saying something to him in her typically perky tone. He’s laughing in response, and so it takes him a minute to notice her standing against the door. 

“Um.” She swallows. “Can I talk to you for a moment?” 

Summer smiles at her. “Don’t worry,” she says, “I’m on my way out.” 

“You don’t have to go.” Sasha tells her, and turns to Payson. “I’m sure it’ll be a quick thing, right?” 

She steels herself and shifts, suddenly twice as uncomfortable as before. “Actually–”

“It’s no problem.” Summer says, and Payson looks down. “I’ll see you two tomorrow.” 

“Sorry,” Payson says as soon as Summer closes the door behind her. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.” 

Sasha gives a small shake of his head. “What’d you want to talk about?” 

“I–” She stops, stalls. “What’s my difficulty like right now, compared to girls who compete?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Execution first, difficulty second, Payson.” 

“Of course,” she mutters hollowly. Of course he would answer that, and nothing else. She glances up at him, tries not to purse her mouth bitterly.

“Your training’s as important as everything the other girls are doing, Payson. More so, even. We’re going where we want to be going, remember?” 

She sighs, remembering his gold medal, its slow glint in the dark of her room from where it hangs steady from a thumbtack, and he regards her with an odd, puzzled expression. After a long moment, he lifts his chin a little. 

“You want to know when you can get back to training camp, don’t you.” he pronounces flatly. “Or onto the national team. Or back to competition.” 

“Not exactly.” Payson lies. “I just– I’ve been thinking. I’ve been doing gymnastics in a bubble for so long, and I love so much of what’s come of it, I love gymnastics so much better for it, but.” She clears her throat a little, then feels foolish for it. “It’s isolating.”

“It won’t always be that way.” Sasha says, smiling sympathetically. 

“How long, though?” she asks. He begins to answer, but she huffs out a breath, cuts him off. “It’s not just that. I know I only still have parts of my beam routine. I know I’m not all the way there, but I’m starting to get scared what I do won’t be good enough outside of here. Outside the Rock. Or that– that I won’t be able to do what I do here if I’m not here, when everyone’s watching.” 

He stands suddenly, and tips his styrofoam takeout container into the trashcan. “Let’s talk out on the floor.” he tells her. “You’ll need to warm up, there’s no one there, and I hate this office, anyway.” 

She follows him quietly out the little glass room. It’s silent, save for their footfalls and the faint little yelps and squeals of the kids in the Tiny Tikes class from off in the annex. 

“You know,” he says, not turning to look at her, “I try not to tell you this, because I’m scared you’ll take it as a signal that it’s time to start throwing enormous skills, but your execution is rather wonderful. Objectively.” 

Payson doesn’t know whether to bristle or to beam at the comment. She folds herself onto the mat haphazardly and looks at him. “I’m not just going to start throwing arbitrary skills, Sasha. Didn’t you say you trusted me?” 

“I know that,” he says, “and I do. Trust you. But you would have done exactly that just four months ago, and it’s easy for me to forget that you wouldn’t now.” 

They’re both quiet for a stretched moment, so quiet that Payson can hear the wet of her throat. She lies back on the mat and away from him, lifts her legs. 

“You think I’m going to hurt myself if I start competing again.” she says. It’s not a question.

Sasha scratches at his neck. “I think you are capable of lots of difficult elements. But on events that aren’t floor or bars, your difficulty isn’t married to that impeccable execution of yours quite yet. It’s far from seamless. We both know that, I think.” He stops, and she regards him through the gaps between her toes. “I don’t think you’re going to hurt yourself if you compete again. I’m just afraid that you will.” 

Payson deflates, and brings her legs back to the floor with a thump. “So I’m not ready.” 

“Not to petition onto the national team in the way that you’ll want to, no. But I was thinking of discussing your progress with Marta, when I’m at the ranch next week. Your routines might not be perfect, but it’d be silly and anal of us to postpone that conversation, I think.” 

She expects herself to break into a smile, but it never comes. Instead, her innards roil in on themselves. “The best case scenario with that is that she’ll want to see me in person.” she says. “And then what if I can’t. What if I can’t perform for other people anymore?” 

“If doing this for someone other than yourself is going make you not want to do it for yourself, Pay, then don’t do it. We’ll wait.” 

Payson turns over onto her side and pushes herself into half a sitting position. “Yeah, yeah,” she huffs. “I know. I want to do it for myself though. So much.” 

Sasha sighs a little. “Remember when you were a junior?” 

She frowns at him. “Yeah, but you don’t.”

He shrugs. “I followed the sport even then. Used to watch your meets. ‘S not the point, though. What was the most important competition to you, back then?”

Payson thinks about it. “Junior Nationals, probably.” She remembers how everyone around her had spoken about her then as though the gold medal were already hers, how, as much as she’d tried to pour every last drop of her attention into mastering every skill, the air of expectation had been palpable. How as much as it’d seemed an annoyance then, it’d allowed her just enough of some incarnation of flippant surety in the right moment to buoy her into the stoic focus she needed. How even then, she’d only been good enough for a silver. 

“Do you remember the competition itself?” Sasha asks. 

“Of course.” 

“Your floor routine during the all-around final, then. People must’ve been screaming your name.” 

She shrugs, wonders where he’s going with this. “It was just the usual general loudness. I wasn’t trying to decipher it.” 

“What _do_ you remember, then?” 

“I used to pick at my calluses when I visualized routines and Marty called me out on it during podium training, and I think I was trying to convince myself not to so that chalk wouldn’t get inside the cuts and make it worse.” She smiles a little wistfully. “I think there was chalk in my mouth. I remember being scared I’d cough during my double twisting double back because of it, or something.” 

Sasha gives the barest hint of a smile for a moment, shakes his head. “What do you remember about the routine itself?” 

“The feel of the floor. The springiness of it– I think it was particularly springy. Not much else, though. I think– I think I was trying really hard to spot the floor at the end of my first pass.” 

“So,” Sasha says– and she hates the hint of a smug note that makes its way into his voice– “you weren’t thinking about other people, or what they wanted from you. At all.” 

“No,” she admits. 

“Not even about beating Kelly Parker.”

“Barely.” she says. “But I was a completely different gymnast then.” 

“Maybe.” He shrugs lightly. “Do you think about what other people might think of you while you’re in the middle of a routine, now?” 

“I used to worry that I looked like a fool to you, I guess.” It’s almost funny to her that it’s that easy to say it to him, now, only two months after she’d hyperventilated in that parking lot for hours. “Not during a skill, though. During the skill it’s always been just the skill and me.” 

Sasha nods knowingly and she asks, “Was it always like that for you too, when you competed?” 

“Every time.” he says. “What makes you think it’d be any different for you, now?” 

Payson takes in a deep breath, lets it out. “It’s not going to be effortless, Sasha. It’s been so long. I’ve changed so much. What if– what if I can’t block it all out anymore and do it just for myself and the skill when everyone’s watching?” 

“Payson. You _can_. I know you can. If not the first time, soon after that.” 

“Sasha, “ she pleads, “I don’t know–” 

He squats suddenly and drops onto the mat, puts his hand on hers. “Hey,” he tells her. “Trust me, right?” 

“Yeah,” she says softly, automatically. Has to remind herself, for the barest moment, not to flinch when he touches her like this, when it’s not to straighten her arm or to balance her, or to spot her during a leap or a twist. 

“If you can’t do it for yourself and the skill,” Sasha says, “do it for me?” and she’s nodding even before she consciously decides to, because even though she knows he doesn’t mean it as a question, it almost sounds like one. Because even though she isn’t always sure she trusts him, he is the only person who understands the seam between her mind and her gymnast’s body well enough to push her when she cannot push herself. Because even though he was always going to pull her up from the mat, he sat down on it with her first, and, she thinks, doing it for him makes her feel like she’s doing it for herself, anyways. 

__

Payson stops at home to eat a slice of pizza with the gaggle of thirteen year olds that have descended on her house, then packs a pair of sleep shorts and workout clothes before she drives to Kaylie’s. Her mom’s helping Becca announce the day’s surprise to a small pack of squealing girls (they’ve rented out a skating rink for the evening), so Payson sneaks a kiss into her sister’s hair before leaving her gift on the back table, pulling on a flannel and slipping out. 

Lauren and Emily are already there by the time she pulls up in Kaylie’s sprawling driveway, reminding herself not to think about the sheer size of the house. ( _At least six or seven times the size of yours,_ her brain reminds her treacherously.) Payson strolls up to the door, hears Lauren’s raucous laughter over the bell as she rings it. 

Kaylie opens the door and exclaims, “Hi!” at the same time that Lauren shouts from the living room, “Tell us about the hottest boy you’ve kissed, Payson!” 

Payson stares. “Um. Hi.” 

“Guess we’re not passing the Bechdel test tonight.” Emily says wryly, just loud enough for Payson to hear. 

Kaylie rolls her eyes. “Come in.”

Even though it’s not her first time in the house, Payson can’t help but stare at the opulent chandelier hanging between the arches framing the entryway. “Lauren,” Kaylie’s saying to her, “is just trying to get a rise out of all of us. Ignore her.” 

“We’re playing truth or dare!” Lauren pipes up, looking like a five year old in a candy shop. “It’s my turn, and Kaylie chose truth, so I asked her to tell us about the hottest guy she’s kissed and she’s refusing to answer.” 

“To be fair,” Payson says, “you two and boys have never been a healthy combination.” 

Lauren throws up her hands. “I wasn’t even trying to bring up Carter, okay! No way he’s the hottest guy she’s made out with. Besides, aren’t we both over him? He’s all the way in Denver.” 

“Payson,” Kaylie says in a measured tone, “why don’t you take the question?”

Payson throws her duffel bag to the ground and falls onto a sofa. “Not like I have much of a sample size,” she says.

“How big _is_ the sample size?” Lauren asks.

Payson answers unthinkingly. “Two.” 

“Oooh!” Lauren squeals. “Who’s the second guy?”

 _Shit_ , Payson thinks. 

“Who’s the _first_ guy?”Emily asks, just as she’s about to invent a story about Ike.

“Nicky Russo!” Lauren exclaims. “Were you blind, Em?” 

“I think you should ask Emily the question, Lo.” Payson says pointedly. “We don’t know anything about her life before the Rock other than that Marty found her at a YCMA in Fresno.” 

“I like the way you think, Payson.” Lauren waggles a finger at her before turning to Emily. “Do dish.”

Emily shrugs. “Damon, I guess? I don’t know. I’m probably biased.” 

“ _Someone’s_ forgotten the no-dating rule again.” Kaylie mutters. “If only we could all get away with breaking the rules.” 

Emily shoots her an exceedingly dirty look and turns away. Payson tucks her legs under her and stares at her knees.

“Jeez, Kaylie.” Lauren says. “You don’t have to be a bitch about it.” 

“I’m not being a bitch,” Kaylie retorts. “I’m just doing my job!” 

“Isn’t this supposed to be a bonding experience?” Lauren says cockily. “Because I don’t think any of us wants to bond with the bottom of the Antarctic sea.” 

“Well, who’s being the bitch now!” Kaylie yells. “Besides, it’s my house.” 

Payson’s had enough. “God,” she says exasperatedly. “Can you two stop biting each others’ heads off? It’s Emily’s turn. Let Emily have her turn.” 

Emily shoots her a grateful look. “Payson. Truth or dare?”

Payson decides that she has no idea what Emily’s capable of coming up with, and that she doesn’t want to be responsible for vandalizing Kaylie’s house. “Truth,” she says. 

“What’s the most irresponsible thing you’ve ever done?” Emily asks. 

Payson mulls over it. Trying to kiss Sasha easily trumps cutting class to spend time with stoners, but there’s no way she’ll ever tell any of them about that. “Refusing to take the cortisone shot at Nationals.” she says. “I nearly killed myself because I let Kelly Parker get in my head. I should’ve recognized that I was in too much pain to compete, but given that I wasn’t going to.” She trails off. “Well. It’s not like the cortisone itself was actually against the rules.”

“Do you wish you’d taken it?” Emily asks her. 

The fervent desire to relive those five minutes in the bathroom isn’t squirming inside her anymore, Payson discovers. Instead, she feels an odd disconnect with the girl that had stepped onto the podium in St. Louis telling herself that she could refuse pain. “It would have saved me a lot of trouble,” she tells Emily, “but it’s in the past. Really.” 

There’s a silence, and she rushes to fill it. “Kaylie.”

“Truth.” 

“What would you be doing if you weren’t a gymnast?” Payson asks. 

Kaylie thinks. “I’d probably want to be a singer or a songwriter. My mom knows some people, so I guess I’d have somewhere to start too.” For a moment, the crease on her forehead disappears. “What about you, Payson?” 

“How do you know she wouldn’t choose dare?” Lauren objects. 

Payson shrugs. “I wouldn’t, and I don’t think Kaylie wants me to.” 

Kaylie’s tapping her foot now. “So, what would you do if it weren’t for gymnastics?” 

_Public school in Minnesota, trying not to look anyone in the eye in the hallway._ “I like math. And physics.” she says. “Probably something to do with that.”

“Of course you two would find a way to make this game boring.” Lauren huffs. “Come on Pay, choose me next.” She tries for puppy dog eyes. “Pleeeeeeaaaase.” 

Payson sighs, gives in. “Truth or dare.” 

Lauren perks up. “Dare!” 

“Sing the national anthem.” Payson tells her half-heartedly. 

“Only if you guys do it with me.” Lauren says. “Let’s do it like we’re all on the podium.” 

Kaylie smiles a little. Emily shrugs herself to her feet. Payson places a hand over her heart solemnly and stays on her sofa. 

“No, no,” Lauren protests. “Come on, Payson. You have to stand up! We’re on the podium, remember?” 

Payson shakes her head resolutely. “I haven’t been on a podium in more than a year. Besides, I like this couch. I think I’m going to be lazy for once.” 

Lauren rolls her eyes, and they all begin the tune in unison, Kaylie’s thin, sweet voice cutting through Payson’s own low, dull tone and Lauren’s off-key rendering. Payson’s sure that Emily’s just mouthing along. Lauren’s voice gives out into a coughing fit at ‘O’er the ramparts we watched’, and everyone but Kaylie gives up by ‘land of the free’. 

“Maybe you _should_ go do that singing thing, Kaylie.” Lauren says, still clearing her throat of phlegm. Kaylie shoots her a withering smile. Lauren frowns, then glares at her, and turns to Emily.

“Truth or dare.” 

Emily has a glint in her eye, Payson thinks. “Dare,” she says. 

Kaylie and Payson both groan in unison. Lauren’s already smiling like a shark. 

“Perfect.” she says, her tone too polished to be anything close to innocent. Emily’s watching her carefully, and begins to return her smirk. 

“There are two bottles of Grey Goose on the kitchen counter.” Lauren says, and this is when Payson realizes that their evening is about to well and truly go to shit. “Take a shot from one of them.” 

–––

Lauren shoots down Emily’s half-hearted protest of “Won’t Kaylie’s dad notice?” before she can finish making it. “Relax. Bobby from the gym’s twenty-two. He thinks I have a nice ass. He’ll replace it for us.” 

Both Kaylie and Payson begin to shout at the same time. “We’re elite gymnasts, not high school drop-outs!” Payson says. A slow dread begins to prod at her stomach.

“Are you insane?” Kaylie screams. Payson thinks she sees a vein throbbing in her forehead. “Training camp’s next week! Sasha’s going to kill all of us, and my parents are going to kill _me._ ” 

Emily frowns. “Who’s going to tell Sasha?” 

“Payson, probably.” Lauren says. “She’s the one who never works with Tara or Katya, or Jake, or any of the assistant coaches. It’s always her and Sasha. I don’t think she even knows Jake’s name.” 

Something coils sharp in Payson’s chest, even as she remembers calling Jake ‘Jack’ right before lunch. “Fuck you.” she grinds out. “I broke my back. For your information, I’m staying out of this.” 

Lauren throws her hands up. “So- _rry._ You know,” she muses, “it consistently shocks me that you, Miss Midwestern Princess, have more of a potty mouth than Trailer Park Kid over there.” She gestures at Emily, who gasps in mock outrage. 

“I am _not_ a trailer park kid!” 

“ _I’ll_ tell Sasha!” Kaylie shouts desperately. “Haven’t we learned this lesson before? I puked at that miserable kegger, remember?” 

Payson nods vigorously. Emily shrugs. Lauren shakes her head.

“Right.” Kaylie mutters. “You were busy fucking Carter, weren’t you.”

Lauren throws her hands up again. “I thought we were over that!” 

“Maybe if you didn’t try so hard to follow the rules, Kaylie, you’d have a life,” Emily says venomously. She stands and begins to walk languidly toward the kitchen. “Lauren, will you do a shot with me?” 

“Absolutely.” Lauren says, pacing rapidly after her, and that’s when Kaylie breaks into a run after both of them. 

Kaylie’s too late. Emily and Lauren are both sitting cross-legged on the tiles, each clutching a bottle tightly to their chests. 

“ _No._ ” Kaylie moans, her face in her hands. “No, no, no–” 

“You’re not even using shot glasses.” Payson says numbly. 

Emily exhales noisily and coughs. “Wow.” she says. “Ohmygod. I haven’t done that since California.” 

Lauren high fives her and says, _badass_ at the same time that Kaylie squawks, “You were secretly an alcoholic in California?” 

Emily turns to Payson and blinks slowly, then giggles. “Payson,” she asks, “do you ever like girls?” 

Payson’s about to tell Emily that she liked her until ten minutes ago before she notices that Emily is still giggling at her drunkenly. “Give that to me.” she says sharply, gesturing at the bottle, which is only a quarter full. 

“No!” Emily insists petulantly. She clutches the bottle to her like a child. “It’s mine. And you haven’t answered my question.” 

_They both weigh less than a hundred and ten pounds_ , Payson thinks inwardly, _and I’m going to watch them die._ “You’re not making any sense.” she tells Emily. 

“I had this friend in Fresno and you own more flannel than she did and she was like, _such_ a lesbian. And you don’t really go out with guys. So I thought maybe it was just taking you time to figure it out, you know?” 

Bewildered, Payson stares at her. Lauren’s eyes bug out as she bursts out laughing. 

“That’s the most politically incorrect thing I’ve ever heard you say, Em.” Lauren cheers. “I love it.” 

“She had a septum piercing!” Emily says happily. 

Behind them, Kaylie suddenly looks up from her hands. “You know what?” she exclaims. “Let’s throw it all away. Everything we’ve ever worked for. Let’s be the COOL KIDS!” She does a haphazard flourish, complete with jazz hands, then throws an arm out to Lauren, gesturing at the bottle of Grey Goose. “Give it to me. I’m going to have some.” 

Lauren frowns, one corner of her mouth turning further down than the other. “Are you okay?” 

“No!” Kaylie screams. “What you’re holding belongs to my dad, ergo it belongs to me, if anyone. And I want some. _Now._ ” 

“Lauren, you _cannot_ give that to her.” Payson says. “She’s got to have the lowest tolerance of all of us.” 

“Oh yeah?” Kaylie challenges, and by the time Payson realizes her mistake, she’s already snatched the bottle from Lauren. “Watch me.” 

Payson watches in mute horror as Kaylie thrusts the neck of the bottle into her mouths and gulps once, twice, thrice, then a fourth time. She slams it down onto the counter and burps. 

“You know what?” Kaylie says. “Screw it all. Why don’t we order some fries with that?” 

–––

An hour later, Payson’s backed up against a cabinet, her knees to her chest, and Kaylie’s spread-eagled on the counter. 

“Fries,” she’s chanting. “Fries, fries fries.”

Beside her, Emily breaks into a rousing rendition of the national anthem, and Payson starts to understand why she lip-synched along. “Ooh say can you say!” she brays. “By the fawn’s burly might–” 

“This is all your fault.” Payson says to Lauren. “It’s always your fault.” 

“I know.” Lauren replies stiffly, a far cry from her defiance before. “I’ve created a monster.” 

“Monsters.” Payson says. “Plural.” 

Neither of them says anything for a moment. Emily is still in song. Kaylie is, thankfully, growing less insistent about the fries.

“Who’s a right and bright bar!” Emily giggles, then hiccups. “Drew the ferry nest high–”

“It’s just that I can’t _stand_ her anymore.” Lauren interjects. “I thought she’d be better tonight, when we weren’t at the gym, but it’s almost like she got worse.”

“Fries!” Kaylie yells. 

Lauren snorts. “Scratch that. She definitely got worse.” 

Payson doesn’t have anything to say to that. She looks over at Kaylie, her cheeks hollow, eyes rolling aimlessly and pleading for fries, and remembers how, when they were eleven, she used to wear her hair in dark pigtails and do back tucks in front of the television while Dominique Moceanu’s famous floor routine to _The Devil Went Down To Georgia_ flashed across the screen _._ She thinks that they haven’t been children in a long time. She thinks that they’ve been children for too long. She thinks, _what have we become._

“Do _you_ think I’m gay?” she asks Lauren. 

Lauren laughs. “Emily’s just really drunk. Granted, you have one of the least feminine senses of style I’ve ever seen on a girl our age, and definitely on any girl in the gym world, but hey, each to their own, right? Even though Nicky did fizzle out, I’m pretty sure you’d drop your panties for Sasha. He might be old, but any dude counts.”

Payson tries to fight the raging blush that claws itself across her face at that. “My grandma orders me these shirts from L. L. Bean every holiday.” she says defensively. 

“Tell your grandma to stop.” 

She hugs her flannel around her. “They’re really cozy, okay?” 

“Every holiday? Are you trying to tell me she orders them for the fourth of fucking July?” 

As if on cue, Emily doubles in volume. “And the bo-o-ome of the raaaaave!” 

“I wish boys would like me.” Payson tells Lauren, feeling stupid even as she says it. “Even if I don’t like them.” 

“Come on,” Lauren elbows her lightly. “Nicky was nuts about you.” 

“I was nuts about being the perfect gymnast, and Nicky had a boner for gymnastics. Which meant that he put me on this strange pedestal and helped me do insanely irresponsible things to keep me on it. That’s different than being crazy about me.” 

Lauren shakes her head at her. “Whatever. I wouldn’t care if you were actually gay. I mean, I would, because it’d be absolutely scandalous, but.” She pats Payson’s shoulder. “No one thinks you’re a lesbian, Pay. Don’t get worked up over it.” 

Payson shudders out a breath. “You’re right. I’m not even drunk.” she says, then frowns. “Why aren’t you on the floor with them?” she asks Lauren. “Shouldn’t you be as drunk as Emily?”

`

“Yeah,” Lauren mutters, “sure. If I’d actually had more than a sip.” 

Payson sputters. “What.” 

“I just wanted to piss Kaylie off.” Lauren moans. “This stuff’s like, eighty proof! I’m not stupid!”

Payson stares at her incredulously. “You have got to be kidding me. Why the fuck did you get Emily drunk, then?”

“I didn’t mean to, I swear!” Lauren insists. “I didn’t think she’d actually go for it!” 

“What if Sasha leaves?” Payson can feel the hysteria rising in her, tries to push it away. “He threatened to leave after that whole disaster at the kegger if we ever did anything like it again, you know. He’s going to know something’s up when those two show up to the airport looking half dead. And– oh god, Lauren, I don’t think Kaylie’s okay–”

“No shit, Sherlock–” 

“–no, I mean, even before she poured a quarter of that bottle down her throat. She looks like she’s about to break all the time, and she keeps reciting all the rules like she’s doing a bad parody of me circa age fourteen, and– how the fuck is she going to make it through training camp after this?” Payson tangles her hands in her already disheveled hair to steady them. “If she doesn’t _die_ of alcohol poisoning first. Oh god, what if she passes out? She’ll get in trouble with USA Gymnastics if there’s a hospital record. Not to mention her parents. Fuck, fuck, _fuck–_ ”

“Payson, _shut up._ Right now you’re the onedoing a bad parody of yourself circa age fourteen. Relax. Let me call Bobby. He’s older, so he’ll know what to do. Plus, he can replace the Grey Goose–” 

“I do _not_ want Bobby here!” says Payson shrilly. 

“Fine. If you’re so responsible, then you figure out how to take care of this!” 

Payson doesn’t respond to that. Instead, she slumps against the hardwood of the fridge’s door until she’s nearly lying on the floor herself. Beside her, Lauren blows hair out of her face. 

“Do you think,” Lauren says after a minute, “that Sasha used to do shit like this when he was our age?” 

Payson swallows hard, forces herself to shrug. “How would I know? And even if he did, doesn’t mean we should.” 

“Quit being so textbook, Payson.” Lauren’s mouth twists into a contemplative smirk. “You know, I bet he did.”

“Right. Because he totally won four gold medals with a beer belly.” 

“I’m just saying. He was hot, and he was a rebel. Besides, wasn’t he screwing his publicist? He might be all about discipline now, but that’s a recipe for a party boy if I’ve ever seen one.”

Payson gnaws on her nail. She’s seen the old headlines ripped from gossip rags, of course. Scoured through each and every one she could find on like it was homework before promptly erasing her search history with burning cheeks. Sasha with his fists tight around the pommel horse, mid-spin, the crowd a blurred matte in the background; Sasha with his shoulders loose, his mouth grazing the ear of a tall, thin, nameless wisp of a girl, her face obscured by sunglasses and shadows; Sasha, godless and smirking. Sasha the rebel. Sasha, furious, unrelenting, unrestrained, his entire body an exhale on a punching bag. Sasha, nonchalant, the young and unpracticed flop of his hair grazing his temple, telling a reporter that if he closed his eyes, it was all his, just like that– every unthinking twist of his body, the unquestioning stick of his feet on the floor, every person in the stands, their eyes fixed on him, cheers steady, rising, glinting like gold. 

Sasha with wide eyes and stiff shoulders, pushing her away from his mouth. Sasha, his stare soft, hand reaching for hers, voice lilting, a question. _Trust me, right?_

Payson has always wanted to believe that they were destined for it. Hand-picked, even. That if she practiced as surely as clockwork, as ardently as she could, whatever happened was whatever needed to. But. She sees Kaylie and Emily, incoherent and babbling, lying on the tiles. Looks down at her own hands, calloused and trembling, covered in the flopping green flannel of too-long sleeves, feels the back of her neck staggered against wood. They will all break, she thinks. How could she have ever imagined otherwise. It is just a matter of learning what it means to break. Her spine twinges, and something in her chest jolts and comes unanchored. 

She raises her hands to her collar. Undoes the top two buttons of her shirt. Finds a patch of flaking skin, coarse from the dry Boulder winter. Plucks. 

Lauren’s looking at her a little strangely now. “Does it really bother you so much that he wasn’t some kind of robot gymnast?”

Payson’s about to stutter out an answer when Emily groans. “My stomach feels–” She makes a sound halfway between a gasp and a cough. “–kinda fuzzy?”

Lauren’s on her feet in no time. “You’re not puking in this kitchen,” she says, “because I don’t want to clean it up. Bathroom. Now.” 

She can hear Emily already gagging as Lauren drags her away. Numbly, she pushes herself up. 

_You are not going to choke on your own vomit,_ Lauren is saying. _I won’t let you. Breathe. Easy. Let it out–_

Kaylie’s lying on her stomach, unmoving. 

“Kaylie?” she says slowly. She feels almost like a child tip-toeing through the dark, woken from a nightmare in a sweat. 

Kaylie’s shoulder jerks up for a moment, and she moans. “No.”

“Kaylie.” Payson’s seen Kaylie drunk before, has seen her lolling with drunkenness, even, but it’s different like this, her body unbearably small and alone, the cacophony of a kegger unavailable to distract from the silent mouth of the enormous house. “What’s the passcode to your phone?”

Kaylie moans again, a long vowel. “No–” 

“I just want to call Leo.” Payson pleads. “He won’t tell your mom or dad, I promise.”

“No.” Kaylie lifts her hands weakly, covers her eyes. “I despise my face.” 

“I like your face.” Payson says placatingly. “Please, I need to call someone.” 

“I just want to do something.” Kaylie slurs. “Everyone’s always yelling and I need to do it all right and I try and I just can’t do anything.” She gasps, gulps at air in a rush. “I have to do it right and whenever I want to do something and I do it, it’s wrong and I feel wrong.” 

“Kaylie.” Payson strokes her hair tentatively. She can hear Emily dry-heaving in the bathroom, can hear Lauren’s frustrated attempts at comfort. “The passcode, please, I don’t know what to do–”

“You do things,” Kaylie mutters, and Payson has to strain to hear her. “Like, you can do things because you don’t care what other people think. I wish I could do things like you, you know? Like, look at you. You don’t care–” 

Payson pushes down her disheveled hair. “I care,” she says, trying to sound affronted, pretending she knows what on earth Kaylie’s saying. Kaylie’s head lolls in response. “Do you– do want to stand over the sink?” 

Kaylie nods and Payson pulls her up gingerly. She falls against the sink like a rag-doll. 

“You’re such a good friend.” Kaylie rasps, just as Lauren calls for Payson. 

“Stay right here,” she tells Kaylie. “I’ll be right back.” 

Lauren’s almost running as Payson passes her. “She coughed on me,” she snaps. “And there’s no soap!”

Emily’s still gagging into the toilet and Payson strokes her hair, doesn’t say a word. Lauren returns in moments, lingers at the doorway, her mouth curling in vague disgust. There is a sudden, far-off thud. 

“Goddamnit,” Lauren says. “Kaylie’s on the floor again.” 

Payson jerks upward in alarm. “Make sure Emily throws up before she passes out,” she says, and rushes back to the kitchen.

Kaylie’s greener than she was five minutes ago. Payson hauls her to her feet and presses her flush against the sink. 

“Do you feel any better?” Payson asks quietly. Kaylie shakes her head slowly. Her hair’s falling forward in sweat-drenched wisps.

“I just wanna go home,” she mutters. “Just wanna go–” 

“Shh,” Payson soothes. “Have some water.” 

“No,” says Kaylie, “no, it’s too much. How many calories would that be?” And then she spills into the basin, a pungent mess; spills and spills and spills. When Payson reaches forward to hold her at the waist, all she can feel is bone. 

––––––

Later, when Lauren’s snoring softly on the sofa and she’s made sure that Emily and Kaylie are asleep, Payson pads through the cavern of the house and into the bathroom. Flicks on the light. 

She’s got the near-empty bottle of Grey Goose in hand, her sleeves rolled up until the elbows. The dry patch near her collarbone is red and rubbed raw. Her hair is wild and frizzed into tufts around her face, entire strands escaped from a never-pristine bun. There’s a newly bleeding crack on her lip. 

She sets the bottle down. Unbuttons her shirt entirely, lets it fall open. Her breasts are small sturdy mounds, nipples hardening in the rush of cold light. There is nothing about the body staring back at her guileless enough to belong to a child. She sets her jaw the way she does every morning, hardens her eyes, and stares without blinking. Averts her eyes after a few moments because if there is anything she is beginning to know, it is that staring contests are always finite. It is a fact on the cusp of some kind of womanhood. 

Payson Keeler, a woman. 

_No_ , she thinks. No. Not that. Not yet. But there are things she know that children cannot. _I pissed myself once,_ she thinks. _I was sixteen, and I wanted power over my body with everything in me and I was bedridden and bloodless and broken and I pissed myself because I couldn’t help it._

She is sixteen, still. 

She and Kaylie are not so different, then. They’ve each wanted control over their bodies so much that they’ve almost lost control entirely. Kaylie will learn, she supposes. They all have to. 

She remembers walking onto the floor and saluting a long line of judges even though her spine was a row of bullets clenching down her back. Remembers waking to the pain and convincing herself it was what would make her great.

 _We will all break, eventually,_ she thinks. _Good._

And yet. Who is she, outside of obligation? 

A girl, raising herself up onto her toes and towards a man’s mouth as though she could have him, _just like that–_

_What’s the most irresponsible thing you’ve done?_

Payson lets herself imagine Sasha with his shoulders loose, laugh looser, a glass of scotch in hand. What it means to be a man, or to think like one. She tries to loosen her shoulders, pretends she isn’t watching herself. If she watches herself she will be a kid again. 

_There is a life outside of what can be planned_ , she tells herself firmly. She can choose the dare over the truth, sometimes. She is her own. 

_Nowhere to be tomorrow._

Payson lets herself pick up the bottle. When she tips its final sip down her throat, she closes her eyes. 


End file.
